Reviewing studies

Reviewing studies

The initial search identified 2674 (unfiltered) documents relating to the 17 interventions in the shortlist.

Duplicate articles were removed and, after first pass appraisal, 291 reviews articles were deemed relevant. To this list were added a further 71 documents that were found through supplemental searching. A second pass appraisal by health research analysts was undertaken at the time of data extraction, and this left a total of 84 documents referenced in the final report.

Selection of evidence

The most relevant and the highest quality evidence was extracted from the studies identified in the review. The following hierarchy was applied to prioritise data for extraction: